


The Hanged Man Smiles

by punahukka



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-06
Updated: 2011-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-27 00:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punahukka/pseuds/punahukka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik and Charles told in a Tarot deck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hanged Man Smiles

**Author's Note:**

> Playing with Marvel's toys; no profit made. Inspired by Neil Gaiman's short story _Fifteen Cards from a Vampire Tarot_ and Bruce Dickinson's _The Tower_ lyrics.

 

 **00 The Fool**

Someone told me a life without heartbreak isn’t a life worth living. Only when you’ve had something crushed to pieces so badly you think you’ll never be able to laugh, breathe, walk, have faith or love again you find how hardships only make you stronger. The tricky thing is, when you’ve met your match, your other half, the missing piece of yourself, you take your fall not only with them but for them, and you break with them, and even when you’re lying bruised, beaten and wrecked the taste of blood in your mouth belongs to them as well. You hurt and they hurt; they’re dying and you’re dying. As long as the foolish heart of yours beats on, it beats for them.

  
 **01 The Magician**

“There’s something wrong with that boy.”

Sometimes Charles Xavier answers questions you haven’t asked. Sometimes you could swear he asks his questions twice.

He learns to control it, but the worst damage to that kind little heart of his is already done, and it makes him sad beyond his years to see the _fear_ in their eyes.

  
 **02 The High Priestess**

He kept telling us there was someone else in the water.  
We pulled them up, and from the moment they first stopped and really looked at each other, the rest of us felt like intruders.

  
 **03 The Empress**

She has unruly dark blond hair and serious green eyes and she can climb into a tree faster than any of the boys, and she doesn’t giggle, and when she punches it actually hurts, and when Erik is nine years old he is sure he’s going to marry her.

  
 **04 The Emperor**

 _Ein._  
Thus recites the master  
 _Zwei._  
and maybe some day  
 _Drei._  
Erik will move the coin.

  
 **05 The Hierophant**

Charles had kissed a girl before he went to college, but it was a boy named Michael who first shoved his sweaty palm down his pants and jerked him off in a toilet. The next day Charles ducked just in time to avoid a broken nose, and even though Michael’s buddies shared his disgusted view ( _queer cock-sucker faggot_ ) they didn’t want to get in trouble and dragged him away from Charles.

In years to come he stuck to ladies who (most of the time) didn’t feel like beating the shit out of him after performing the beast with two backs.

  
 **06 The Lovers**

(Sometimes you can point out the exact moment that determines the course of the rest of your life.)

Erik doesn’t walk out on the other mutants, his newly-found kin, even when the file about Shaw is burning the side of his knee through the suitcase.

(Sometimes you can’t.)

Erik doesn’t walk out on Charles because everything about the telepath silently screams _look at me feel me like me love me join me have me_ , and the battle against insane immediate attraction is a battle he must fight.

  
 **07 The Chariot**

 _Hunter_ , he thinks as Erik’s gaze sweeps over his naked body. _Predator._

Erik doesn’t give a shit about the mapping other ladies and gentlemen have done before him but sets on an exploration of his own, claiming every inch of Charles his territory. The Poles, Mariana Trench, Mount Everest, Sahara, Amazon, Siberia, everything.

 _Proud_ , he thinks as Erik moves inside of him. _Conqueror_.

  
 **08 Strength**

I drink a bottle of wine and smoke my first cigarette in three weeks, and not for the first time I wish I could be dancing at the same end of the ballroom as he is. But I’m just here, the one with no special powers, here for him, even if I never got the dance, here to step aside, here to watch and wait, here to kill if that man ever hurts him.

  
 **09 The Hermit**

“You are not alone.”  
Oh, but I will be, when it comes to the time you won’t stand by me.

  
 **10 Wheel of Fortune**

No children should dream of nuclear missiles. No man should wake up beside his lover and feel like they’re playing Russian roulette with a machine gun.

Hush now, darling, the world may not end today.

  
 **11 Justice**

He keeps visiting the man in the room of plastic.

“The things we used to do,” Erik muses over the chessboard. “Had they known and we would have both been imprisoned.”

  
 **12 The Hanged Man**

I, Charles F. Xavier, hereby declare I don’t care anymore. I take my bow, raise my hands, wave a white flag, scream at the top of my lungs that I’ve had enough.

I know a story about a god, one of the children told it to me, his English bad but the images in his mind vivid, a god who let himself be hung in a tree for nine days pierced by his own spear, only to learn, to know, to understand, and he was always seen as a god of men.

The rope around my neck is soothing, the grave is soft, and I feel sleepy.

I die alone every night, and every morning I smile and pull myself back to life.

  
 **13 Death**

It’s not the bullet in his spine. It’s the realization that it’s not the bullet.

  
 **14 Temperance**

“Show me those scars,” Charles whispers in the dead of night and then, ever so gently, drinks in those old hurts, follows them with his fingers and his lips, takes away some of their power by showing he’s not afraid of them.

  
 **15 The Devil**

He enters his room in the Brotherhood’s temporary residence only to find it already occupied. It’s Charles, curled up at the end of his bed, a pillow tucked under his arm, leafing _The Once and Future King_.

Erik’s insides squirm into a tight knot, and for a fleeting moment he wonders if he could play along, have it and believe it.

“Get out of my bed.”

The lithe figure stretches, slowly, and takes its time to rise to its knees, shift into deep blue skin with red hair and bright yellow cat-eyes, stand up and walk to him. Walk, and the knot makes him feel sick.

There’s no mocking, no pity, only infinite sadness in those eyes, and he fights the urge to strangle her on the spot.

“We have to let go,” she says quietly over her shoulder before stepping out of the door.

  
 **16 The Tower**

This little piggy went for the kill.  
This little piggy got fucked.  
This little piggy had his revenge,  
This little piggy still loved.  
And this little piggy went “I want him by my side!” all the way home.

  
 **17 The Star**

Erik watches as Charles kisses a wet trail down his chest, visibly enjoying every brush and nib and lick of it, and he can’t help marvelling how the body remembers better than the mind.

“Do you still trust me?” he asks, knowing the answer but needing to hear it.

The perfect set of bluest eyes and reddest lips smiles up at him, but the words are whispered into the hollow between his hipbone and groin. “I trust that you still make me feel.”

The telepath’s whole presence is humming the soft, familiar tune of _love me love me love me_ , and Erik fucks him with all the rage and serenity he can spend.

It’s the same old song playing in his mind as he helps Charles get clean, get dressed, get back to his wheelchair.

  
 **18 The Moon**

I am a scientist, and even when I have never seen the dark side of the moon I have to believe it is there. I do not deny that it makes me uncomfortable, knowing that my dearest friend takes occasional walks on that dark side, but he was raised better than to kiss and tell, and I do not ask. There are whispers, rumours, jokes even, but he of all people should have the privilege to abandon the restrain once in a while and enter his dream-space that very few of us have glimpsed at. We were young back then and we did not understand, but if there is some kind of chemistry to bond people together for all eternity and beyond, I have never seen a manifestation as strong as the one between them.

But then again, I am blue and furry, and what should I know of these things?

  
 **19 The Sun**

 _You’re perfect._  
“We are perfect.”

  
 **20 Judgement**

Is there such thing as Fate?

Was there a guiding star you kept staring at on the opposite sides of the world, knowing without being aware of it that someday it would fall down to earth, marking the place where you would finally meet?

Do you believe in souls?

Was it the human evolution shaking hands with the Cosmic Joker? Was it meant to be or did it just happen? Did Mother Nature have a good laugh?

Did you see the poetry of it, the union of mind and matter?

Does it get easier after the first time, the back-stabbing? How does it always end up like this, and is there any real need to apologize when you know you’re already forgiven? Why do you take that shit decade after decade and still look at each other like it was your wedding day? How many times are you willing to witness the world coming down hand in hand?

Where do you find such hope?

Will you ever understand what you’ve been given or what you’ve created?

  
 **21 The World**

“My friend,” he says, and they both smile, happily ever after.

  
 **22 The Fool (revisited)**

Someone told me a life without heartbreak isn’t a life worth living. I believe them.


End file.
